


If on a Winterfell's Knight a Lannister

by marfra



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: But only if you squint, Confessions, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, I just want them to be happy, Light Angst, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, canon you say? mmm weird name for a guy, episode fix-it s08e4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 10:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marfra/pseuds/marfra
Summary: Jaime would like to make it light, defuse the stifling tension he feels building, but the ruse of the game is short-lived, and he knows now is not the time for jokes, that truths such as this fragile thing they might have need gravitas.ORAnother way their first night together could have been.





	If on a Winterfell's Knight a Lannister

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! While I think we may all agree that they deserved so much better -- especially in the light of how it all played out at the end of the episode and in the next one -- I also wish that their first night together would have been different. Saving a few lines and the way it was acted, to me it felt a bit cheap overall, lacking the tenderness and acknowledgement I wanted to see after 4+ seasons of slow burn and yearning glances. So here we are. Hope you'll enjoy it! 
> 
> Title is a pun based on Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" because I just couldn't resist.

Following Brienne down the corridor and up to her room feels like the inevitable thing to do. Jaime doesn’t immediately reach out to her, though; watching her stiff back disappear around the corner, he exhales. He’ll give her a moment or two to vent, he reasons, she seemed quite prickled, after all. Though, grudgingly, Jaime admits to himself that  _he_  is the one who needs a minute — to gather his wits and a fair share of courage. A few more swallows of Dornish wine won’t hurt as well and, collecting two cups and a full jug, he finally goes to find her.

Jaime hasn’t lived the Long Night only to see another dawn where he isn’t unequivocally by Brienne’s side — if she’ll have him, that is. The most maddening thought of all is that he actually thinks there’s a chance she would. Whether she should is another matter altogether, one that Jaime has spent too long debating over, but Brienne calls him  _Ser Jaime —_ has for a long time now — she’s vouched for him and fought beside him. She unwaveringly believes he  _is_  a man of honour and isn’t that a heady thought, one that Jaime has ridden north to prove true, to her and to himself. He knows the way she looks at him, craves it dearly - the dripping contempt of his Kingslayer days now replaced by utter wonder barely disguised as disbelief. These days Brienne is wary around him, guarded in a way she was not when he was a manacled captive actively trying to escape from her and his oath.

The knock on the door is hurried and artless. Jaime feels unsteady at the rush of relief when she opens it, a bit surprised and wrong-footed herself. Drawing a fortifying breath, he doesn’t ask her to come in, instead strides directly to the small table by the fireplace, professing to be at her door to continue their drinking game, which is such a blatantly false, silly pretence that she must know as well, but Brienne allows him the courtesy of not pointing it out.  In the time it took him to concoct one excuse flimsier than the other, she changed, her jerkin leaving place to only a shirt. And how appropriate that is, what with the room seemingly growing hotter and hotter by the minute. Jaime fumbles with his jacket, manages to take it off, at last, turns around to find Brienne more perplexed than anything, a questioning look in her eyes. Jaime would like to make it light, defuse the stifling tension he feels building, but the ruse of the game is short-lived, and he knows now is not the time for jokes, that truths such as this fragile thing they might have need gravitas.

“Forgive my brother, he can be quite abrasive when he sets to it.” Jaime starts, though it feels inadequate somehow. “No need—” Brienne says, “It was a fair guess, after all,” her attempt at deflection stilted and embarrassed. There’s uneasiness in her expression, mouth turned down at the corners and eyes shifting restlessly, completely at odds with how she was downstairs, giddy with the incredulity of having survived, of being  _alive._ But their camaraderie seems forgotten now, left at the table along with mindless games and playful glances. Jaime is out of his depth here, unsure of what to say next, of how to tell her that, really, who bloody cares? Except that she does and he does too, apparently, only— for different reasons. The thought of Brienne with anyone else sits heavily in his guts, whether it is a wildling with questionable anecdotes or another knight in shining armour, it just— it's not something he can think about. He’s not sure he can voice that, though.

“We could— I mean. We. You know,” he says, gesturing ridiculously between the two of them with his golden hand, the other reaching for a cup of wine, his throat suddenly parched. Brienne’s eyes snap to his face, uncomprehending at first, and then, once the implication is clear, “Piss off. How drunk are you?” she says, a touch of anger back in her words but mostly sounding hurt and betrayed. He can’t blame her for not believing him, it  _was_  a piss-poor declaration as far as those go and he is so badly out of practice— he’s never had to practice, really — and this is not how he’s pictured it at all. He can see why she would interpret his so poorly worded intentions as jibing; he did mock her mannish looks and maidenhead almost a lifetime ago, two-handed and cocksure as he was. In her ears, the jape must sound even crueller, not expecting the blow to come from him, not after all they’ve been through. 

But would Brienne believe him, if he actually said  _I want you,_  would she let herself trust those words and their promise? Jaime doesn’t know the answer, not yet— decides that he’ll show her, first. Setting the cup back on the table, he steps forward, closer to Brienne, who now seems even more at a loss than before. “Brienne,” he tries — he can’t go wrong with her name, can he?— he lifts his left hand to her face; slowly, incredibly slowly, he cups it against her cheek, warm and warmer by the second. He says her name again, soft and almost pleading. Brienne’s eyes are huge now, shocked and locked on his, but she doesn’t move his hand away. He takes it for the permission that it is and shuffles even closer, almost chest to chest now. “What are you— I know I’m not—” Brienne tries to articulate, voice barely a whisper and swallowing around her words. She looks spooked, Jaime thinks, and he has seen her fighting a bear while brandishing only a wooden sword and all the determination she could muster.

This will not do.

He starts stroking her cheekbone back and forth with his thumb, says, “But you are. _You are._ ” Jaime hopes she understands, that she will give him the chance to prove it. Brienne’s mouth is agape, letting out shaky puffs of air. And it’s only natural now for Jaime to tilt his head up, lean closer still, and brush his lips against her eyebrow, her bruised eye, down her cheek. Brienne’s hands have moved to his chest, loosely fisted in his shirt. “Jaime,” he hears, the word forming on his jaw, and it’s both a whisper and a plea. He can’t help it. For all the tenderness he feels spilling over, Brienne’s low voice undoes him. Jaime surges sideways, irresistibly drawn to her already parted lips.

For a moment, all he does is take. He kisses her for himself, for all the time he’s spent imagining, if not this moment precisely, then any other version of it. And,  _Gods_ , Brienne responds with equal force and enthusiasm, her initial surprise bleeding into an eagerness that matches his own.

It’s a clumsy affair. It’s glorious.

He wants it all at once, the endearing hesitancy of unpracticed movements, the unexpected sighs, the stripped bare earnestness, her wine-sour mouth, her mouth. Jaime feels like fire, burning up and all-consuming. He stops, leans back a little, Brienne unconsciously following after his mouth.

Jaime takes a minute to look at her, to really look, now that he’s been granted permission to not let his eyes divert. She is— she is heart-stopping. Blue eyes giving way to a foreign hopefulness that mirrors his own, puffy lips slowly moving into a tentative smile. Jaime is awestruck. He has to kiss her again, and again. This time, he tries to be gentler, unhurried; he wants to draw it out. Brienne’s hands are properly gripping his shirt now, two anchors trapped between their chests, no space left. He can’t keep track of how much time has passed, only knows that it’s not enough.

Brienne turns her cheek fully into his palm, in what could only be described as a nuzzle, kissing it, almost shy, and turns her eyes back on him, stealing the air from his lungs. She takes his hand in hers, then; pulls him towards the bed. Jaime can only follow, stupefied and spellbound. Unlacing his shirt is no easy feat, fingers tugging uselessly at the knots, as if his left hand too has become a block of solid gold, stiff and uncooperative. Brienne watches him fumbling for a moment; then, deliberate and resolved, she takes over. Her hands work quickly, utilitarian, as if this was just another task to perform at the end of a long day. There’s no suggestion of seduction in the way she unties the laces and yet Jaime is transfixed, gaze broken only when Brienne slips the shirt up and over his head. Next comes his golden hand, Brienne so careful and considerate that Jaime swallows thickly, has to avert his eyes. Once she removes her own shirt, chin up but hands slightly faltering, they face one another equally bare, lost in the moment.

“I’ve never slept with a knight before,” he tells her with wonder; this simple truth leaves him small and exposed, the real meaning thinly veiled but unmistakable in its implication. Her reply is expected, level and matter-of-fact; it still stuns him, to think that of all people she would— Jaime is in a daze, almost asking out loud if this is really happening. He reaches out with his hand to make sure. Brienne’s pale skin is a discovery in itself, the slow drag of his fingertips leaving goosebumps in its wake, tracing a path from the scars on her neck to the dip of her hip. On its way up, the pad of his thumb lingers leisurely on a hardened nipple, and there’s almost no pressure at all, the hint of a touch, really, but Brienne’s eyes snap open, a wild determined look on her face. She brings him closer by the stump, putting it on her lower back, no ceremony at all, and, with her other hand clasped on his nape, she guides him up to her mouth. This kiss feels more pressing, raw and demanding, the shock of bare skin against bare skin urging them on, his hand touching whatever it can reach; her ribs, her hip, her disappointingly still clothed arse. He must voice that or she must think so as well, because the next thing she does is leaving him open-mouthed and confused, halting the kiss and his groping to remove the rest of their clothes with a brisk efficiency that oddly reminds Jaime of the one she has on the battlefield.

Somehow, they find themselves on the bed, Brienne on her back tugging on top of her a dazed Jaime by the shoulders. The softness of the furs is incongruous with the ragged way they’re moving against one another, instinctual past the point of coherent thought. Brienne must feel how hard he is,rubbing on her, legs tangled; how frantic her hands on his back, in his hair make him. And with those hands still buried in his hair, she directs him to her neck, to her collarbones, lower still. With no preamble at all, Jaime sucks one nipple into his mouth, thumbs the other with rough strokes. Brienne is openly panting by now, his name occasionally breathed on an exhale; the heel of her foot runs encouragingly the length of his leg from calf to mid-thigh. Jaime mouths her nipples some more, gently nips one only to soothe it after with his tongue, tease it again with drawn-out blows of air. It’s intoxicating to feel Brienne shiver under him, their points of contact carrying the tremors to his own skin. Jaime looks up at her, takes in her head thrown back, the long line of her neck, the tension in the set of her shoulders.

“What— why did you—” Brienne says with a rasping voice, trying to guide him back down, fingers still carded through his hair. When he doesn’t give in, but rather pushes back up against her hands, she takes them off, propping herself on the elbows to look at him. “Is it—”

He interrupts her by sliding up her chest, the wet drag of his cock on her taut belly distracting them both for a moment, making him moan. Face to face, he nudges her head back on the furs, kissing her sweetly, barely any tongue; momentarily appeased, he runs his hand through her tousled hair, brushing it away from her eyes. She looks bemused and perhaps a bit unsure, her lips pursed in question, but before she can ask anything he says, “Tell me you want this,” even now too craven to ask what he really means.

“What, you don’t think it’s obvious enough,” she replies, tightening her legs around him to make her point.

“Tell me anyway,”

She must realise how much this matters to him because a moment later she blinks her eyes in understanding and says, “Jaime. Jaime, I want this,”

He’s about to kiss her again, already tasting her, when she puts her fingers on his lips, interrupting him. Tracing his bottom lip, she lifts her eyes from his mouth and, looking directly in his, as brave as always, Brienne says, “I want  _you,_ ”

Something in him is cut loose then, and Jaime feels himself falling.

Later, much later, when they’re under the furs, lying on their sides facing one another, Jaime watches Brienne fighting sleep, her face deeply tired but untroubled. Drowsy himself, he moves closer, nuzzling the hollow of her throat, and brings his arm around her, the stump resting between her shoulder blades. “Sleep,” he murmurs against her skin, his last conscious thoughts of warmth and tomorrow _._  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback much appreciated :)


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